


Cĭnĕrĕus

by fraisemilk



Series: Onomatopoeia [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:26:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3827248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraisemilk/pseuds/fraisemilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were born in the Land of Wet Tears, where raindrops fall and get caught in red strands of hair and black eyelashes.<br/>(Kagura, leaving a home, finding another.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cĭnĕrĕus

**Author's Note:**

> cĭnĕrĕus: the color of ash.

You were born in the Land of Wet Tears, where raindrops fall and get caught in red strands of hair and black eyelashes. Never, never have you seen the blue sky your mother and your father talk about: an open eye, wide, wide as the world. Nor have you felt the warm breeze Brother describes to you (and warmth, warmth, is it not only the property of your mother’s cold embrace?).

 

* * *

 

And the clink clonk of rain against the rooftops

And the grey of the sky and the _bang_ of thunder

Is this not the only world your hands will ever touch?

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Father comes back bloody and angry, still trembling with the fierce might of fury. On these days he does not say anything about the Blue sky, or about the Bright stars he loves and the Beasts he fought. He sits at the table – stares at the grey ugly walls of your home. An animal in a cage. And you: you are a bird in this cage, too. 

On these days – nightfall quiet, the heavy breathing of silent Father, the steady rhythm of you heart entrapped by your ribs – Brother is Quiet, too, but it is a very different quiet, because he is always quiet, except now nothing can conceal the blood that fills his eyes and the fire burning bright in his smile. This is a Loud quiet, and it fills you with murky, forewarning fear. You know: you know. Brother isn’t like Father. They are so dissimilar in their silence and their brooding. And you: you are a bird in this cage, too.

 

* * *

 

Your mother’s last kiss isn’t like you imagined. It isn’t cold and wet like rain. It feels very cold, but so full of something burning, something that aches, like the un-sound of thunder right before it sings. In those dry lips and thin arms, between the bones and blue veins you can see under her hands’ transparent skin, there is something that hurts, that tries to get away, to expose itself. Unfulfilled. Her kiss isn’t warm nor is it _fully_ a goodbye. You want it to be _more_ , so much more. You want it to burn you, to inscribe itself into your flesh. You want its coldness to haunt you forever. But then it ends, everything, the breath and heart and the trembling in your chest. You feel the feeling receding, vanishing in thin cold air.

She is dead. You Father tells you, when he arrives three days later. So this is death, you think. How insignificant death is. How immaterial. Mother is dead, you tell Brother when he is back, one day and a half after Father. He doesn’t seem surprised. His eyes close for a second. His face is pale in the blue light. When he opens his eyes, his smile and his eyes become sinister. Two round pieces of cobalt carved in dead cold flesh, saying: I can no longer be a bird in this cage. Brother wants to leave. You feel it too, this longing. But how can you go, now? How could you ever, ever leave, now that the warmth is gone?

 

* * *

 

A raindrop on your eyelid. Sliding on the left side of your cheek, disappearing before it reaches your chin.

Another raindrop, this time on your lips. It tastes like nothing. It tastes like rain. Rain, rain, rain. It’s always raining, but you keep forgetting your umbrella. You want to see the sky. You cannot make it out with an umbrella. But here you cannot see the Real sky. The sky without clouds, the one Father talked about, before. Father doesn’t talk anymore. You haven’t seen him in a long while.

He almost bled to death, and now he’s gone. He isn’t dead, you remind yourself. Every day, every day you wait; isn’t this absence worse than death?

One drop on you left hand, right in the middle of your palm. It feels like a message. Leave, it says. You: are a bird in this cage.

 

* * *

 

Space has no warmth, but you do not feel cold there. Instead, you feel very, very tiny. Mother never spoke about the void. This gigantic void where light itself is lead astray, where lone and small figures float,  Planets, Stars (bright, bright, but so small in this big, big infinity), Galaxies – sparkling, these galaxies, so far, so grand, so bright in the darkest nothing this universe has to offer. No blue here, except in blinks, hidding in the shade of a planet’s rings. And you, in this void; you let the humming of the engine lead you. Somewhere, anywhere. You learn: in this enormous vacuum, you are but a bird; and you understand: you are merely a dot in the whole universe.

 

* * *

 

Their yellow star, the one which they call: the Sun. It isn’t the brightest star there is, a woman with brown eyes and blue eyelashes tells you. “It’s quite tiny.” Yet, on your white skin, it feels hot, burning.

Yet you cannot run to hide in the greys of your old home; it is too far, buried in the shade of a planet’s rings, beyond a barrier you cannot cross just yet. You need to grow.

You need to grow.

 

* * *

 

Even with your umbrella, and the red-blue shades it makes on the ground

Even when you meet violent men and scary faces and scheming smiles

You can see the blue, blue sky, and want to call it Home.

 

* * *

 

In the spaceship you find a flyer that explains how Earth’s volcanos work. It says: “ _a vent in the earth's crust through which lava, steam, ashes, etc., are expelled, either continuously or at irregular intervals_ ”. Sometimes they are venerated by Men, the flyer reads. But it is because they are always, always feared. Under the planet’s surface, burning rocks, incandescent lava, that risk bursting out any time, to destroy and only to destroy. But those are only rocks in fusion. They cannot help it. You stare at the flyer for a long time after reading it.

You remember: you _are_ a volcano - so maybe ‘Earth’ will be your destination.

 

* * *

 

It rains on this planet, too. Sometimes, the weather is cold, and your hair is damp, and everything takes the colours of your faraway home. You can almost feel, on the mornings when you wake up drowsy (almost-dreams and near-memories shifting there, under your blue blue eyes), your mother’s icy arms against your neck. And in the mirror: two round pieces of cobalt, telling you “There is a Bird-Volcano in this cage” – asking you: is it time to burst out of your flesh yet?

But when you take a walk in the streets, saying “Hello” to the old lady with odd wrinkles all over her skin

Or when, still hearing the storm dying off in the distance, you distractedly look up in the hope of catching a patch of blue blue sky

There is Light: reflected thousands of times, in the water that covers the pavement, in the puddles, in the river, in the windowpanes; and in the air, too: in the very Transparent you can make out the unreal shape of the sunrays that manage to dive into and through the clouds. Vertical lines in the very atmosphere. How odd, you think, that you never saw such beautiful things at home.

 

* * *

 

You make your nest in a closet; an old woman with odd wrinkles on her face and on her hands (Ugly wrinkles, but you can see, under this timeworn witch look, kind and watchful eyes) gives you blankets and futon, muttering things under her breath (something about rent, and money, and sugar, strawberry milk). On your first night in this place that belongs to who should be a stranger, you sleep soundly. You do not dream. It feels natural, almost like you’ve been here your entire life – and you stay; and this life and every other lives become a rhythm. Gintoki’s breathing, when he sleeps in his room, or on the worn-out sofa, whose red colour is bleached by the afternoon’s sun; the clatter of glasses, downstairs, and the occasional yells of drunken customers; the birds outside, singing at four in the morning.

And the clink clonk of rain against the rooftops

And the grey-blues of the sky and the _bang_ of thunder;

And you; and everything else: _This_ is where you belong.

 

* * *

 

You write letters and send them to your father; you like to imagine that they will reach him, one day. You put the papers on Gintoki’s desk so that they can soak in yellow sunshine at the end of the afternoon, and draw puddles and flowers on the bottom of the pages. You put real flowers in the envelope. You envision them floating in the great big void beyond the clouds and the Blue.

You do not wait anymore; you hope, maybe, sometimes. You miss him. But you do not dwell on him. You: are no longer a bird in this cage.

 

* * *

 

You were born in the Land of Wet Tears, where raindrops fall and get caught in red strands of hair and black eyelashes. You left a home to find another;

Now you found it. You live in the Land of Blue skies and warm breeze, where you skin can burn and where your nose reddens when you walk down the street without your umbrella; everything, even the shadows and the clouds, has a colour full of light.

You learn that you can find warmth everywhere, and that it takes any form, any shape. It doesn’t hide like you once thought underneath translucent skin and softly-told stories. In fact, it only shows, only reveals: in ugly wrinkles, in muddle-brown eyes, in closets and musty blankets. And you, you are not a volcano, you discover. There is warmth and burning passion, an anger and a thirst for power; but everything you do comes from a choice you make. And happiness, too, comes from yourself, but it does not exist by yourself. 

You: are Kagura, born on Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Kagura is truly amazing, and a very, very compelling character. I enjoy working on her. Also the whole rain imagery linked to her in the manga is one of my favorite! I might have changed a few things about the chronology of events (did Kamui leave before or after their mother's death? I can't remember tbqh). It's my longest works, ever, i think.
> 
> This is part of the Onomatopoeia series, the next story will be about... i don't yet know, hijikata maybe? we'll see.
> 
> Writing this took me around 13 hours - distributed in a week or so. If you could give a kudo, or even a comment, that would be great!! :D
> 
> (tumblr: da-da-daaa)


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